He wondered about the other cities, Perdura, and Telluria and semi-tropical Columbia, with its warm springs and teeming soil where the most exquisite delicacies for the Inner Council, and to a lesser extent the First Order were grown. Wondered if they, too, were condemned to this inhuman rule of death and oppression.
Perlac made a signal to one of the technicians, and a two-seater "Treader" with its revolving belt instead of wheels moved out from among the parked vehicles. But before Guerlan and Perlac could enter the swift surface car, a dull roar that seemed to shake the very foundations of the cavern paralyzed all movement, as if in a slow motion-picture of ancient days, a tremendous section of the cavern wall fell in a shower of rock and plastic, and through the gaping breach, rank upon serried rank of "Intermediates" poured through. They wore the Inner Council's conventional plastic armor, vividly scarlet, with tight-fitting helmets of crysto-plast. Silently they deployed with grim precision and aimed their atomo-rifles.
But if they had expected to wreak havoc aided by the element of surprise, they were mistaken. Technicians and scientists working on the super-spacer, instantly entered the armored ship, while the army of mechanics, graders, coordinators and workmen, who labored on treaders and tended the mechanical appliances and repair machines, took cover in and behind their charges.
For a second Guerlan had been frozen in his tracks. The thought that flashed into his mind was one of exultation instead of despair. Here was an enemy he could really fight. All the pent-up fury, the terrible anger of a decent man who has had all his beliefs swept away in a matter of hours, who had seen depths of human degradation he had never dreamed possible, was like a bath of cold fire that left him calm, determined and with one desire ... to exterminate.
As if she were a doll, Guerlan swept Perlac beside the armored "Treader" and without preamble snatched the Electro-Flash the girl wore at her waist. "Keep covered. Let me do the fighting!" He exclaimed, impervious to her outraged stare. Carefully he aimed at the foremost leader of the Intermediates, and the obscenely beautiful, sexless warrior, crumpled as part of him instantly dissolved. A vast, coruscating sheet of blue, atomic fire swept forward from the deadly atomo-rifles of the invaders, and vehicles, technicians, and several machines, became a welter of smoking flesh and melting metal.
It was then the super-spacer went into action with its two frontal atomo-guns, the thunderous echoes vibrated with tympani-shattering force, and Guerlan saw a phalanx of Intermediates vanish as if they were leaves in a wind.
Unaware of doing so, Guerlan was bellowing exultantly, as he played the Electro-Flash horizontally across another phalanx that had succeeded in gaining the proximity of the Spacer. They had seen him now, and the survivors aimed their atomo-rifles at the treader that sheltered them from the blue fire. But before they could bring their fire into focus, the supernal fire of the electro-flash had decimated them. A few managed to direct the stream of atomic fire on the treader, however, and half of it was a molten mass while the rest was already cherry red and the heat becoming unendurable.
Electro-rifles, atomo-pistols, the guns from the giant spacer and a few electro-flash weapons were concentrated on the Intermediates who by sheer force of numbers had gained the center of the Cave.
And then they were met by a wall of flesh. From the buildings at the further end and from every vehicle and machine a wall of humanity surged forward, firing ceaselessly, hacking with long-swords and poniards; and the carnage under the brilliant plastilumes was without quarter ... to the death. Slowly, inch by inch, the Intermediates were driven back. Scores had died, and the losses among the defenders were appalling; it seemed as if a Pyrrhic victory was to be the end. And then, like creatures from a nightmare, released from depths of living hell, a motley, ragged, maddened multitude came shrieking, shouting and hurling imprecations from the chaste building Perlac had called the Psycho-clinic. Like avenging furies, they flung themselves at the hard-pressed Intermediates. Wounds did not stop them; atomic-fire left gaping holes in their ranks, around which the survivors raced on. Impervious to pain, and welcoming death, these travesties of human beings fought with the savagery of madness.